A couple of weeks ago I was listening to Steven Adler (former Guns N' Roses drummer) being interviewed on the Howard Stern show, they talked about Sober house(which I enjoy) but of course the discussion turned to his firing from Guns N Roses. He talked about how devastated he was and how it really messed him up, they tried to screw him out of his royalties and Steve sued and won $3 Million plus his share of the royalties from "Appetite for Destruction" which sold an incredible amount of albums. Howard asked him how he was making out financially besides the money sober house/celebrity rehab gave him, Steve said he gets a comfortable living from the royalties that come in every year from "Appetite for Destruction".

Being a Pearl Jam fan my thoughts turned to Dave Abbruzzese, while I'm sure Dave felt much the same way Steven did after getting fired Dave did not have to go through Lawsuits or anything. Whatever people want to say about the decision to fire Dave, the lack of any litagation on Dave's behalf signals that Pearl Jam did indeed do right by the guy.

Dave Abbruzzese joined Pearl Jam a few days before Ten was Officially released, does Dave get any royalties from Ten?.. I Know Dave K not Dave A was on Ten, but Dave Abbruzzese joined Pearl Jam right before the album was released. When he joined the band did he get any piece of Ten, I would think they would have cut him in on atleast a partial share.

Which leads me to the re-release of Ten, I'm wondering if Dave Abbruzzese did indeed get cut in on a piece of Ten back when he joined does that mean he will be getting a piece of the re release. While I'm sure Dave does well with the royalties from Vs and Vitalogy (both sold about 5 million), Ten sold a whopping 10-12 million albums.

I believe (and I could be wrong) that album royalties pay the musicians who performed the songs for a recording, as well as the writers of the songs, neither of which Dave was. I would guess he gets 0% for Ten, but yes for Vs & Vitalogy. Royalties are paid by places that make money from music, like big restaurants, venues, etc. They pay either ASCAP or BMI, and they dole out the earnings to their member musicians. My "music business" courses from college are a little foggy though on the specifics.

He would get performance fees for stuff like Drop in the Park..he wouldn't get a dime for ten itself though.

He'd deffo be getting some royalties for his part in the unplugged and related sales from the boxset too. Other than that he's the drummer(and co-writer) for Vs. as well as appearing on Vitalogy.

Safe to say he gets regular pretty hefty royalty cheques, they'd have thinned out maybe(i dunno what Pjs presence on US radio is like) but he's comfortable on it i'd imagine.

Put another way, he's not auctioning off 'memoribilia' on ebay just yet so take it outta that.

Also, radio play here earns artists revenue..thats not the case in the US is it? Billy Corgans thing a while ago comes to mind...

Oh... that too. That's one of the biggest I imagine.

He gets nothing for Ten. The reissue is probably a much more complicated matter, since he plays on Drop in the Park as well as Unplugged.

But he didn't see cash for Ten sales. Vs. and Vitalogy sales probably made him rich. Probably even more valuable are his songwriting credits for the songs on those two albums, since they have been commercially released on numerous official bootlegs and live recordings over the past ten years. I'm sure he also received a nice check for royalties on Rearview Mirror (Platinum) and Lost Dogs (Gold).

You can look at those as long term investments for him.

In terms of other money, Dave probably played somewhere close to 300 live shows with the band, often times earning thousands of dollars per night off ticket revenues and who knows what percentage of merchandising sales etc. He probably became a millionaire just from his touring career alone.

This talk makes me wonder how much each of the guys are worth. Sometimes I think that bands aren't nearly as rich as you would think, but I bet the guys from Pearl Jam are probably multi millionaires. Yeah? We all know they give a lot to charity, but I wonder how much they are worth before that. Like, I wonder if the band broke up would they be set for life via royalties? Or would they have to go back to their day jobs? lol I wouldn't mind seeing Ed pumping some gas into my car and Stone landscaping for 8 hours a day 6 days a week. haha

There are stories of ed not ever cashing his cheques from Ten..dunno if that's true, I remember an interview yeeears ago, and him talking about cashing his first cheque and it being a really intense experience for him.

we'll never know but i'd say they'll be like the Who and end up relying on touring to maintain the lifestyle. That or releasing classy boxsets, which they can only do so many times.

Well, the rough math assuming they received $1 per CD (which surprisingly is near the norm an artist gets for a major label contract), they sold what...ten million or so of 'Ten?' That's $10 million right there. They might have got more than that (the average is something like $1.30 per CD). U2 has the highest royalty of anyone in the business, something like $8 PER CD.

I'm sure PJ's royalties have gone up since then, so it's safe to gander they're doing fine financially.

Sheck, for Ten, it's more like 9c per cd, 10c if they're lucky. It was their first record and i'm sure they got way bigger proportion of the pie on Vs, but not for their first one.

minus taxes, agent, manager, etc fees. they maybe made a million a piece from Ten plus royalties?

I thought i remembered hearing that they did not renegotiate with Sony, and that they honored their original contract, even though they were selling crazy numbers of records... but I don't recall where I read this. I could be wrong.

Ooh, it's not that little, man. Before all the deductions (promotions, marketing, videos, the buyout from Polygram for the Mother Love Bone deal, etc), it's $1 at least. It might END UP at nine or ten cents after that, but if it started there, they'd owe the label thousands and thousands of dollars even if they sold ten million. That would have been a HUGE news story back in the day if that were the case.

little man

i lol'd

I put a comma in there. :p

feck...ye did!! i do need to go to specsavers...

Royalties (for airplay at least) take a year to get back so they'll probably be waiting at least that long for the redux to come good for them but it'll definitely come good in a big way, i've friends who are lapsed Pj fans and they're all about it..hopefully it pays off...

I'm sure that Dave A has it real well with the royalties from multi platinum VS and Vitalogy.

In Finland a gold sertification needs 15,000 albums sold.

I don't think performance royalties exist by default. As far as i know it's totally dependent on contracts what a performer as such gets. Session musicians don't get any royalties they're just payed to do the job once.

Dave probably lucked out that they decided to share songrwiting credit (I think) on all of the VS songs. Unless he was secretly the genius brains behind the album.

I think it's more than 9 cents per album, I think it's closer to the $1 dollar figure even after managers, agents, taxes etc.. I think the way album deals were written is each time you reach a certain level of sales your piece of the the album sales goes up, I think it's safe to say with Ten Pearl Jam blasted through every level and earned every bonus possible.

As for radio play I had a professor in College who was a retired entertainment lawyer, she worked in New York and had a lot of experience in the industry. She told me that for big acts on average every time a song gets played on the radio the artist (or band) gets about .25 cents, thinking about how many times a day I hear Pearl Jam songs here in Central New Jersey on both New York and Philadelphia radio stations (plus Sirius) then thinking about the entire country they obviously do well with that aspect.

I keep hearing in interviews today with various artists that the industry has changed significantly and that the money isn't in album sales any more, people don't buy albums like they used to. In fact I was listening to an interview with the rapper Flo ri da and he stated they make more money of selling ring tones than they do for the albums. The reason being they get to keep the whole $3.95 or whatever for each ring tone sale. But the major source of revenue is in touring.

Earlier in Pearl Jam's career they played a lot of festivals (Lollapoloza) and smaller venues, I think it's safe to say while Pearl Jam's last 4 albums haven't sold as well as the first three the accompying tours to support those albums have been the most lucrative tours for Pearl Jam.

Beginning with the 1998 tour Pearl Jam has been selling out major sports arenas (MSG, Meadowlands, Philly, Chicago etc.) as well as ampitheaters that host 15,000-20,000 fans on 70+ date tours. The 1998, 2000, 2003, 2006 tours must be monster money makers, while pop artists have to cancel dates all the time because of poor ticket sales Pearl Jam has to add dates each tour because of strong sales.

That's a huge testament to Pearl Jam and their fans, we all obviously enjoy each other's company.